The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

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Emboldened by success, the Whig leaders ventured to proceed a
step further. They brought into the Lower House a bill for the
securing of the King's person and government. By this bill it was
provided that whoever, while the war lasted, should come from
France into England without the royal license should incur the
penalties of treason, that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act should continue to the end of the year 1696, and that all
functionaries appointed by William should retain their offices,
notwithstanding his death, till his successor should be pleased
to dismiss them. The form of Association which the House of
Commons had adopted was solemnly ratified; and it was provided
that no person should sit in that House or should hold any
office, civil or military, without signing. The Lords were
indulged in the use of their own form; and nothing was said about
the clergy.

The Tories, headed by Finch and Seymour, complained bitterly of
this new test, and ventured once to divide, but were defeated.
Finch seems to have been heard patiently; but, notwithstanding
all Seymour's eloquence, the contemptuous manner in which he
spoke of the Association raised a storm against which he could
not stand. Loud cries of "the Tower, the Tower," were heard.
Haughty and imperious as he was, he was forced to explain away
his words, and could scarcely, by apologizing in a manner to
which he was little accustomed, save himself from the humiliation
of being called to the bar and reprimanded on his knees. The bill
went up to the Lords, and passed with great speed in spite of the
opposition of Rochester and Nottingham.688

The nature and extent of the change which the discovery of the
Assassination Plot had produced in the temper of the House of
Commons and of the nation is strikingly illustrated by the
history of a bill entitled a Bill for the further Regulation of
Elections of Members of Parliament. The moneyed interest was
almost entirely Whig, and was therefore an object of dislike to
the Tories. The rapidly growing power of that interest was
generally regarded with jealousy by landowners whether they were
Whigs or Tories. It was something new and monstrous to see a
trader from Lombard Street, who had no tie to the soil of our
island, and whose wealth was entirely personal and movable, post
down to Devonshire or Sussex with a portmanteau full of guineas,
offer himself as candidate for a borough in opposition to a
neighbouring gentleman whose ancestors had been regularly
returned ever since the Wars of the Roses, and come in at the
head of the poll. Yet even this was not the worst. More than one
seat in Parliament, it was said, had been bought and sold over a
dish of coffee at Garraway's. The purchaser had not been required
even to go through the form of showing himself to the electors.
Without leaving his counting house in Cheapside, he had been
chosen to represent a place which he had never seen. Such things
were intolerable. No man, it was said, ought to sit in the
English legislature who was not master of some hundreds of acres
of English ground.689 A bill was accordingly brought in which
provided that every member of the House of Commons must have a
certain estate in land. For a knight of a shire the qualification
was fixed at five hundred a year; for a burgess at two hundred a
year. Early in February this bill was read a second time and
referred to a Select Committee. A motion was made that the
Committee should be instructed to add a clause enacting that all
elections should be by ballot. Whether this motion proceeded from
a Whig or a Tory, by what arguments it was supported and on what
grounds it was opposed, we have now no means of discovering. We
know only that it was rejected without a division.

Before the bill came back from the Committee, some of the most
respectable constituent bodies in the kingdom had raised their
voices against the new restriction to which it was proposed to
subject them. There had in general been little sympathy between
the commercial towns and the Universities. For the commercial
towns were the chief seats of Whiggism and Non conformity; and
the Universities were zealous for the Crown and the Church. Now,
however, Oxford and Cambridge made common cause with London and
Bristol. It was hard, said the Academics, that a grave and
learned man, sent by a large body of grave and learned men to the
Great Council of the nation, should be thought less fit to sit in
that Council than a boozing clown who had scarcely literature
enough to entitle him to the benefit of clergy. It was hard, said
the traders, that a merchant prince, who had been the first
magistrate of the first city in the world, whose name on the back
of a bill commanded entire confidence at Smyrna and at Genoa, at
Hamburg and at Amsterdam, who had at sea ships every one of which
was worth a manor, and who had repeatedly, when the liberty and
religion of the kingdom were in peril, advanced to the
government, at an hour's notice, five or ten thousand pounds,
should be supposed to have a less stake in the prosperity of the
commonwealth than a squire who sold his own bullocks and hops
over a pot of ale at the nearest market town. On the report, it
was moved that the Universities should be excepted; but the
motion was lost by a hundred and fifty-one votes to a hundred and
forty-three. On the third reading it was moved that the City of
London should be excepted; but it was not thought advisable to
divide. The final question that the bill do pass, was carried by
a hundred and seventy-three votes to a hundred and fifty on the
day which preceded the discovery of the Assassination Plot. The
Lords agreed to the bill without any amendment.

William had to consider whether he would give or withhold his
assent. The commercial towns of the kingdom, and among them the
City of London, which had always stood firmly by him, and which
had extricated him many times from great embarrassments, implored
his protection. It was represented to him that the Commons were
far indeed from being unanimous on this subject; that, in the
last stage, the majority had been only twenty-three in a full
House; that the motion to except the Universities had been lost
by a majority of only eight. On full consideration he resolved
not to pass the bill. Nobody, he said, could accuse him of acting
selfishly on this occasion; his prerogative was not concerned in
the matter; and he could have no objection to the proposed law
except that it would be mischievous to his people.

On the tenth of April 1696, therefore, the Clerk of the
Parliament was commanded to inform the Houses that the King would
consider of the Bill for the further Regulation of Elections.
Some violent Tories in the House of Commons flattered themselves
that they might be able to carry a resolution reflecting on the
King. They moved that whoever had advised His Majesty to refuse
his assent to their bill was an enemy to him and to the nation.
Never was a greater blunder committed. The temper of the House
was very different from what it had been on the day when the
address against Portland's grant had been voted by acclamation.
The detection of a murderous conspiracy, the apprehension of a
French invasion, had changed every thing. The King was popular.
Every day ten or twelve bales of parchment covered with the
signatures of associators were laid at his feet. Nothing could be
more imprudent than to propose, at such a time, a thinly
disguised vote of censure on him. The moderate Tories accordingly
separated themselves from their angry and unreasonable brethren.
The motion was rejected by two hundred and nineteen votes to
seventy; and the House ordered the question and the numbers on
both sides to be published, in order that the world might know
how completely the attempt to produce a quarrel between the King
and the Parliament had failed.690

The country gentlemen might perhaps have been more inclined to
resent the loss of their bill, had they not been put into high
goodhumour by another bill which they considered as even more
important. The project of a Land Bank had been revived; not in
the form in which it had, two years before, been brought under
the consideration of the House of Commons, but in a form much
less shocking to common sense and less open to ridicule.
Chamberlayne indeed protested loudly against all modifications of
his plan, and proclaimed, with undiminished confidence, that he
would make all his countrymen rich if they would only let him. He
was not, he said, the first great discoverer whom princes and
statesmen had regarded as a dreamer. Henry the Seventh had, in an
evil hour, refused to listen to Christopher Columbus; the
consequence had been that England had lost the mines of Mexico
and Peru; yet what were the mines of Mexico and Peru to the
riches of a nation blessed with an unlimited paper currency? But
the united force of reason and ridicule had reduced the once
numerous sect which followed Chamberlayne to a small and select
company of incorrigible fools. Few even of the squires now
believed in his two great doctrines; the doctrine that the State
can, by merely calling a bundle of old rags ten millions
sterling, add ten millions sterling to the riches of the nation;
and the doctrine that a lease of land for a term of years may be
worth many times the fee simple. But it was still the general
opinion of the country gentlemen that a bank, of which it should
be the special business to advance money on the security of land,
might be a great blessing to the nation. Harley and the Speaker
Foley now proposed that such a bank should be established by Act
of Parliament, and promised that, if their plan was adopted, the
King should be amply supplied with money for the next campaign.

The Whig leaders, and especially Montague, saw that the scheme
was a delusion, that it must speedily fail, and that, before it
failed, it might not improbably ruin their own favourite
institution, the Bank of England. But on this point they had
against them, not only the whole Tory party, but also their
master and many of their followers. The necessities of the State
were pressing. The offers of the projectors were tempting. The
Bank of England had, in return for its charter, advanced to the
State only one million at eight per cent. The Land Bank would
advance more than two millions and a half at seven per cent.
William, whose chief object was to procure money for the service
of the year, was little inclined to find fault with any source
from which two millions and a half could be obtained. Sunderland,
who generally exerted his influence in favour of the Whig
leaders, failed them on this occasion. The Whig country gentlemen
were delighted by the prospect of being able to repair their
stables, replenish their cellars, and give portions to their
daughters. It was impossible to contend against such a
combination of force. A bill was passed which authorised the
government to borrow two million five hundred and sixty-four
thousand pounds at seven per cent. A fund, arising chiefly from a
new tax on salt, was set apart for the payment of the interest.
If, before the first of August, the subscription for one half of
this loan should have been filled, and if one half of the sum
subscribed should have been paid into the Exchequer, the
subscribers were to become a corporate body, under the name of
the National Land Bank. As this bank was expressly intended to
accommodate country gentlemen, it was strictly interdicted from
lending money on any private security other than a mortgage of
land, and was bound to lend on mortgage at least half a million
annually. The interest on this half million was not to exceed
three and a half per cent., if the payments were quarterly, or
four per cent., if the payments were half yearly. At that time
the market rate of interest on the best mortgages was full six
per cent. The shrewd observers at the Dutch Embassy therefore
thought that capitalists would eschew all connection with what
must necessarily be a losing concern, and that the subscription
would never be half filled up; and it seems strange that any sane
person should have thought otherwise.691

It was vain however to reason against the general infatuation.
The Tories exultingly predicted that the Bank of Robert Harley
would completely eclipse the Bank of Charles Montague. The bill
passed both Houses. On the twenty-seventh of April it received
the royal assent; and the Parliament was immediately afterwards
prorogued.

CHAPTER XXII

Military Operations in the Netherlands--Commercial Crisis in
England--Financial Crisis--Efforts to restore the Currency--
Distress of the People; their Temper and Conduct--Negotiations
with France; the Duke of Savoy deserts the Coalition--Search for
Jacobite Conspirators in England; Sir John Fenwick--Capture of
Fenwick--Fenwick's Confession--Return of William to England--
Meeting of Parliament; State of the Country; Speech of William at
the Commencement of the Session--Resolutions of the House of
Commons--Return of Prosperity--Effect of the Proceedings of the
House of Commons on Foreign Governments731--Restoration of the
Finances--Effects of Fenwick's Confession--Resignation of
Godolphin--Feeling of the Whigs about Fenwick--William examines
Fenwick--Disappearance of Goodman--Parliamentary Proceedings
touching Fenwick's Confession--Bill for attainting Fenwick--
Debates of the Commons on the Bill of Attainder--The Bill of
Attainder carried up to the Lords--Artifices of Monmouth--Debates
of the Lords on the Bill of Attainder--Proceedings against
Monmouth--Position and Feelings of Shrewsbury--The Bill of
Attainder passed; Attempts to save Fenwick--Fenwick's Execution;
Bill for the Regulating of Elections--Bill for the Regulation of
the Press--Bill abolishing the Privileges of Whitefriars and the
Savoy--Close of the Session; Promotions and Appointments--State
of Ireland--State of Scotland--A Session of Parliament at
Edinburgh; Act for the Settling of Schools--Case of Thomas
Aikenhead--Military Operations in the Netherlands--Terms of Peace
offered by France--Conduct of Spain; Conduct of the Emperor--
Congress of Ryswick--William opens a distinct Negotiation--
Meetings of Portland and Boufflers--Terms of Peace between France
and England settled--Difficulties caused by Spain and the
Emperor--Attempts of James to prevent a general Pacification--The
Treaty of Ryswick signed; Anxiety in England--News of the Peace
arrives in England--Dismay of the Jacobites--General Rejoicing--
The King's Entry into London--The Thanksgiving Day

ON the seventh of May 1696, William landed in Holland.692 Thence
he proceeded to Flanders, and took the command of the allied
forces, which were collected in the neighbourhood of Ghent.
Villeroy and Boufflers were already in the field. All Europe
waited impatiently for great news from the Netherlands, but
waited in vain. No aggressive movement was made. The object of
the generals on both sides was to keep their troops from dying of
hunger; and it was an object by no means easily attained. The
treasuries both of France and England were empty. Lewis had,
during the winter, created with great difficulty and expense a
gigantic magazine at Givet on the frontier of his kingdom. The
buildings were commodious and of vast extent. The quantity of
provender laid up in them for horses was immense. The number of
rations for men was commonly estimated at from three to four
millions. But early in the spring Athlone and Cohorn had, by a
bold and dexterous move, surprised Givet, and had utterly
destroyed both storehouses and stores.693 France, already
fainting from exhaustion, was in no condition to repair such a
loss. Sieges such as those of Mons and Namur were operations too
costly for her means. The business of her army now was, not to
conquer, but to subsist.

The army of William was reduced to straits not less painful. The
material wealth of England, indeed, had not been very seriously
impaired by the drain which the war had caused; but she was
suffering severely from the defective state of that instrument by
which her material wealth was distributed.

Saturday, the second of May, had been fixed by Parliament as the
last day on which the clipped crowns, halfcrowns and shillings
were to be received by tale in payment of taxes.694 The Exchequer
was besieged from dawn till midnight by an immense multitude. It
was necessary to call in the guards for the purpose of keeping
order. On the following Monday began a cruel agony of a few
months, which was destined to be succeeded by many years of
almost unbroken prosperity.695

Most of the old silver had vanished. The new silver had scarcely
made its appearance. About four millions sterling, in ingots and
hammered coin, were lying in the vaults of the Exchequer; and the
milled money as yet came forth very slowly from the Mint.696
Alarmists predicted that the wealthiest and most enlightened
kingdom in Europe would be reduced to the state of those
barbarous societies in which a mat is bought with a hatchet, and
a pair of mocassins with a piece of venison.

There were, indeed, some hammered pieces which had escaped
mutilation; and sixpences not clipped within the innermost ring
were still current. This old money and the new money together
made up a scanty stock of silver, which, with the help of gold,
was to carry the nation through the summer.697 The manufacturers
generally contrived, though with extreme difficulty, to pay their
workmen in coin.698 The upper classes seem to have lived to a
great extent on credit. Even an opulent man seldom had the means
of discharging the weekly bills of his baker and butcher.699 A
promissory note, however, subscribed by such a man, was readily
taken in the district where his means and character were well
known. The notes of the wealthy moneychangers of Lombard Street
circulated widely.700 The paper of the Bank of England did much
service, and would have done more, but for the unhappy error into
which the Parliament had recently been led by Harley and Foley.
The confidence which the public had felt in that powerful and
opulent Company had been shaken by the Act which established the
Land Bank. It might well be doubted whether there would be room
for the two rival institutions; and of the two, the younger
seemed to be the favourite of the government and of the
legislature. The stock of the Bank of England had gone rapidly
down from a hundred and ten to eighty-three. Meanwhile the
goldsmiths, who had from the first been hostile to that great
corporation, were plotting against it. They collected its paper
from every quarter; and on the fourth of May, when the Exchequer
had just swallowed up most of the old money, and when scarcely
any of the new money had been issued, they flocked to Grocers'
Hall, and insisted on immediate payment. A single goldsmith
demanded thirty thousand pounds. The Directors, in this
extremity, acted wisely and firmly. They refused to cash the
notes which had been thus maliciously presented, and left the
holders to seek a remedy in Westminster Hall. Other creditors,
who came in good faith to ask for their due, were paid. The
conspirators affected to triumph over the powerful body, which
they hated and dreaded. The bank which had recently begun to
exist under such splendid auspices, which had seemed destined to
make a revolution in commerce and in finance, which had been the
boast of London and the envy of Amsterdam, was already insolvent,
ruined, dishonoured. Wretched pasquinades were published, the
Trial of the Land Bank for murdering the Bank of England, the
last Will and Testament of the Bank of England, the Epitaph of
the Bank of England, the Inquest on the Bank of England. But, in
spite of all this clamour and all this wit, the correspondents of
the States General reported, that the Bank of England had not
really suffered in the public esteem, and that the conduct of the
goldsmiths was generally condemned.701

The Directors soon found it impossible to procure silver enough
to meet every claim which was made on them in good faith. They
then bethought them of a new expedient. They made a call of
twenty per cent. on the proprietors, and thus raised a sum which
enabled them to give every applicant fifteen per cent. in milled
money on what was due to him. They returned him his note, after
making a minute upon it that part had been paid.702 A few notes
thus marked are still preserved among the archives of the Bank,
as memorials of that terrible year. The paper of the Corporation
continued to circulate, but the value fluctuated violently from day to day, and
indeed from hour to hour; for the public mind was in so excitable a state that
the most absurd lie which a stockjobber could invent sufficed to send the price
up or down. At one time the discount
was only six per cent., at another time twenty-four per cent. A
tenpound note, which had been taken in the morning as worth more
than nine pounds, was often worth less than eight pounds before
night.703

Another, and, at that conjuncture, a more effectual substitute
for a metallic currency, owed its existence to the ingenuity of
Charles Montague. He had succeeded in engrafting on Harley's Land
Bank Bill a clause which empowered the government to issue
negotiable paper bearing interest at the rate of threepence a day
on a hundred pounds. In the midst of the general distress and
confusion appeared the first Exchequer Bills, drawn for various
amounts from a hundred pounds down to five pounds. These
instruments were rapidly distributed over the kingdom by the
post, and were every where welcome. The Jacobites talked
violently against them in every coffeehouse, and wrote much
detestable verse against them, but to little purpose. The success
of the plan was such, that the ministers at one time resolved to
issue twentyshilling bills, and even fifteenshilling bills, for
the payment of the troops. But it does not appear that this
resolution was carried into effect.704

It is difficult to imagine how, without the Exchequer Bills, the
government of the country could have been carried on during that
year. Every source of revenue had been affected by the state of
the currency; and one source, on which the Parliament had
confidently reckoned for the means of defraying more than half
the charge of the war, had yielded not a single farthing.

The sum expected from the Land Bank was near two million six
hundred thousand pounds. Of this sum one half was to be
subscribed, and one quarter paid up by the first of August. The
King, just before his departure, had signed a warrant appointing
certain commissioners, among whom Harley and Foley were the most
eminent, to receive the names of the contributors.705 A great
meeting of persons interested in the scheme was held in the Hall
of the Middle Temple. One office was opened at Exeter Change,
another at Mercers' Hall. Forty agents went down into the
country, and announced to the landed gentry of every shire the
approach of the golden age of high rents and low interest. The
Council of Regency, in order to set an example to the nation, put
down the King's name for five thousand pounds; and the newspapers
assured the world that the subscription would speedily be
filled.706 But when three weeks had passed away, it was found
that only fifteen hundred pounds had been added to the five
thousand contributed by the King. Many wondered at this; yet
there was little cause for wonder. The sum which the friends of
the project had undertaken to raise was a sum which only the
enemies of the project could furnish. The country gentlemen
wished well to Harley's scheme; but they wished well to it
because they wanted to borrow money on easy terms; and, wanting
to borrow money, they of course were not able to lend it. The
moneyed class alone could supply what was necessary to the
existence of the Land Bank; and the Land Bank was avowedly
intended to diminish the profits, to destroy the political
influence and to lower the social position of the moneyed class.
As the usurers did not choose to take on themselves the expense
of putting down usury, the whole plan failed in a manner which,
if the aspect of public affairs had been less alarming, would
have been exquisitely ludicrous. The day drew near. The neatly
ruled pages of the subscription book at Mercers' Hall were still
blank. The Commissioners stood aghast. In their distress they
applied to the government for indulgence. Many great capitalists,
they said, were desirous to subscribe, but stood aloof because
the terms were too hard. There ought to be some relaxation. Would
the Council of Regency consent to an abatement of three hundred
thousand pounds? The finances were in such a state, and the
letters in which the King represented his wants were so urgent,
that the Council of Regency hesitated. The Commissioners were
asked whether they would engage to raise the whole sum, with this
abatement. Their answer was unsatisfactory. They did not venture
to say that they could command more than eight hundred thousand
pounds. The negotiation was, therefore, broken off. The first of
August came; and the whole amount contributed by the whole nation
to the magnificent undertaking from which so much had been
expected was two thousand one hundred pounds.707